The Propeller Group is a a Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles-based art collective led by founders Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phu Nam Thuc Ha and Matt Lucero dedicated to elevating the Vietnamese voice on the international scene. With backgrounds in visual art, film and video, The Propeller Group operates as both an artist collective and an advertisement company named TPG. Through installation, video and sculpture, The Propeller Group has developed an innovative model that merges collaborative, conceptual art practices — partially steeped in the politically inflected artwork of the 1990s — with the forms and methods of popular media today.

Blurring the boundaries between fine art and mainstream media production, The Propeller Group makes large-scale collaborative projects in new media, from videos to web-based applications. They apply systems-hacking tactics to their projects, adopting strategies from advertising and marketing, as well as forms of creation and display that usually take place in galleries and museums. Their ambitious projects are frequently anchored in Vietnam’s history or its current dynamics as a growing capitalist market, yet their work extends to address global phenomena, including international commerce, the tools of war and street culture.

The exhibition is comprised of seven multi-part projects produced between 2010 and 2016, including: “Fade In” (2010), a video that tracks the fake antiques trade in Vietnam and is accompanied by an 18th century antique house; “Television Commercial for Communism” (2011), an advertisement campaign about communist propaganda disguised as capitalist propaganda; “The Dream” (2012), a multimedia work that documents a Honda Dream motorcycle – a highly coveted status symbol in Vietnam – as it is gradually stripped of its parts over the course of a night on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, and is displayed alongside the chassis of the moped; and, “The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music” (2014), a visual and musical journey through the fantastical funeral traditions and rituals of south Vietnam and New Orleans.

Other recent multimedia projects scrutinize the histories of the AK-47 and M16, the two most widely used assault rifles during the Vietnam-American war, including several ballistic-gel blocks that capture the impact of two bullets and a feature film made using existing footage from Hollywood movies, promotional videos, documentaries and YouTube clips titled. AK-47 vs. M16, The Film (2016) is The Propeller Group’s first feature-length work and is being screened once per week from June to September in the Blaffer galleries (check out our calendar of screenings).

The exhibition by The Propeller Group is amplified by a series of public programs throughout the summer and part of the fall. The program begins on June 3 at 1:30 p.m. with a conversation between Tuan Andrew Nguyen from The Propeller Group and Duy Lap Nguyen, Assistant Professor of World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston, moderated by Javier Sánchez Martínez, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow at Blaffer. On June 21 at 12 p.m., Beverly Barret, Lecturer in Global Studies at the Bauer College of Business and at the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, will led a gallery tour with a focus on the impact of globalization in Vietnam. On August 30 at 12 p.m., Robert Buzzanco, Associate Professor at the Department of History and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the Vietnam War, will speak about The Propeller Group’s approach to the war. Finally, during the summer Trinh Nguyen, Programming and Marketing Coordinator at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, will led gallery tours in Vietnamese.

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph — the first scholarly publication about the art collective — that features an artist project and includes writings by Cesar Garcia, curator, writer, and founding director of The Mistake Room in Los Angeles; former Blaffer Art Museum director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, Curator-in-Charge, Contemporary Art and Programming, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Naomi Beckwith, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

The Propeller Group is organized by Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Phoenix Art Museum. The presentation at Blaffer Art Museum is made possible through the generous support of The John P. McGovern Foundation, Cullen K. Geiselman, Cecily Horton, and Jose Solis. Additional funding is provided by the Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Program, the Houston Endowment, Inc., the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Jo and Jim Furr Exhibition Endowment at Blaffer Art Museum, The Sarah C. Morian Endowment, The George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, and Blaffer Art Museum’s advisory board members.

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past” is a truism today, originally from the lips of our great, philosophically-minded comedienne and actress Lily Tomlin. It means simply that we need to radically accept that whatever traumas we have lived through are part of the life experience that created us, and we must build from there. The past is a neutral building block that should engender no emotion from us other than gratitude for who we are today. Still, creative people cannot help but muse over alternate realities that might have been and, through the telling, make sense of the actual narratives. And while such musings can veer toward the pathological in the cases of Jack Early, JooYoung Choi, and Lily van der Stokker, these artists remake aspects of their pasts with glee. A Better Yesterday presents three personal histories and stories that are remade as ambiguously fictional situations.

JooYoung Choi will create a complete alternative universe in which every visitor will need to play a part. Adults will remember when the characters on children’s television needed their help to be saved—whether that help involved drawing, dreaming, or singing along.

Jack Early will present Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes (2015), a multimedia installation with the artist’s ups and downs recounted with a Garrison-Keillor-like simplicity and playing from a customized yellow Victrola. The show will also feature his family recreated as life-size pillow sculptures.

Lily van der Stokker is a Dutch artist whose medium is large-scale wall paintings that might resemble childlike illustrations but always speak of the complexities of adult lives and the weight of our pasts. Many of her subjects deal with nostalgic reverie, remembering the past fondly and creating a rosy colored picture that hints at melancholia and loss. The artist intends to create a new work specifically for this exhibition.

In the era of reality TV and near constant, multifarious forms of therapy, it’s refreshing to celebrate the aspect of artistic creation that makes cold, grey facts of past events into a mutable material for joy.

Repeater is an immersive site-specific sculpture created by Brooklyn-based artist David Scanavio. Installed in the Moody’s Central Gallery, the design of the work playfully skews the shape of the floor and sends it up the walls to a height of 24 feet. The colorful sculpture is made of commonly available industrial tiles that create pathways that invite people to move in and around the artwork. Repeater is both a geometric painting and an architectural space that becomes an irresistible site for engagement.

The Moody will host a day of free family fun on June 3, 12:00-6:00 pm to inaugurate the work. Summer Jam includes a set by DJ Flash Gordon Parks (12-2:30PM), food trucks, and a presentation by David Scanavino (2:30-3PM). Additionally, Houston’s own Outspoken Bean will hold a spoken word performance from 3-4:30PM that includes poets from Meta-Four Houston and Houston V.I.P. Poetry Slam. Aurora Picture Show will host a film screening in the Lois Chiles Studio Theater from 4:30-6PM.

The FotoFest 2018 Biennial takes place March 10 – April 22, 2018, in Houston, Texas, and will focus on contemporary photography and new media art from INDIA, a nation of over 1.3 billion people, and the world’s largest democracy. This is the second time in its 35-year history that the FotoFest Biennial will focus exclusively on photographic artwork from Asia. The Biennial draws over 275,000 visitors during the course of its six-week run. It attracts visitors and participants from over 35 countries, and is one of the world’s longest-running, largest, and most respected international contemporary photographic art events.

India and its society are at the forefront of a changing world. The Indian subcontinent has been a center of culture for millennia, and is widely known for its relics and antiquities. Its history over the last seven decades, since independence from Great Britain, reflects India’s complicated society and emergence as a world economic and cultural power. As one of the five BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), it is acknowledged as an advanced, growing economy - currently the seventh largest in the world.

The FotoFest 2018 Biennial will focus on this emerging powerhouse, and the artists that live and work there, as well as the Indian diaspora. Lead Curator Sunil Gupta is organizing the INDIA: Contemporary Photography and New Media Art exhibition program. Gupta, a Delhi-born artist and curator, splits his time between India and the U.K., and has curated over 30 exhibitions in four countries. Steven Evans, FotoFest Executive Director since 2014, is Biennial Director and exhibition Co-Curator. Together, Gupta and Evans bring nearly 60 years of curatorial experience with contemporary photography and art to the project.

The 2018 Biennial will present artists and collectives that work in dialogue with the long history and emergent future of India and its people. The exhibition will focus on the contemporary mo. ment, and a mix of approaches will be included, including art photography, contemporary practices, installation, moving image, journalistic and documentary photography. Themes will include, but are not limited to, caste and class, the partitioning of the sub-continent, gender and sexuality, conflict, religion, nationalism, new technologies and developments, the environment, human settlement, and migration.

“As a large, multilingual subcontinent, India has always relied on images to maintain a cohesive whole across myriad subcultures, regions, castes and languages. The introduction of photomechanical imaging in the nineteenth century enabled the rapid reproduction and dissemination of both spiritual and scientific ideals,” states Lead Curator Sunil Gupta.

Gupta continues, “Photography for most of its history was too expensive and technical and was left in the hands of ‘experts’ — until the birth of digital technologies and the arrival of the mobile phone, which has given more than 800 million people in India the power to make their own photographs and moving images. This exhibition will address the legacy of the last twenty years, a period when photography and moving image media have been consistently included within critical exhibitions of fine art.”

INDIA: Contemporary Photography and New Media Art will include the central exhibition, on view across multiple venues; a conference on contemporary Indian Art; forums and panel discussions; commissioned projects; a film program; and a performing arts program. FotoFest will publish a hardcover book to accompany the program, with reproductions from Biennial artists, and essays from experts on the region and contemporary art.

“Exploring contemporary Indian art and putting it on a large international stage at FotoFest is a unique opportunity, “says Steven Evans, “not only for the artists, but for the viewers, many of whom will be encountering contemporary South Asian photographic art for the first time. We expect it to challenge many conventions and expectations they have for the region, and for its art and cultures.”

FotoFest has a long history of focusing international attention on emerging and under-known regions. At the FotoFest 1992 Biennial, FotoFest placed a spotlight on Latin American photography in one of the largest exhibition of its kind up to that point. In 1994, they did the same with a focus on Latino Photography in the U.S. In 2000, the FotoFest Biennial exhibition on Contemporary Korean Photography was the first to bring wide attention to that country’s photographers in the West, spawning successive generations of young and talented image-makers. FotoFest 2008’s CHINA Biennial focused on the evolution of photography in that country between 1934 and 2008. The 2012 Biennial was a groundbreaking exhibition of post-war Soviet and Russian photography. Recently, the 2014 Biennial focused on the Arab World, showcasing 49 artists in what was the largest program of its kind in over a decade.